Every Tuesday we bring you issues that impact you as an outdoor loving woman. Whether it has to do with climate change or female empowerment, we scour the internet, including government bills, social media and local and national news, and deliver it to you – so you know.

1. Equal Pay Day

Yesterday, April 9th, was Equal Pay Day. It’s the day women would have to work to in 2018 to make the same amount of money that men made in 2017. Survey Monkey and The Skimm recently teamed up to report on women’s rights and whether or not millennial women can be the change in an election. They found that 46 percent of men surveyed think that men and women are paid about the same. They say that 68 percent of millennial females believe that they make less than men for doing similar work.

The American Association of University Women or AAUW says that in 2016 women who worked full-time were paid 80 percent of what full-time working men were paid. They project that pay gap won’t fully close until 2119. To put that into perspective for millennial women, that could be five generations from now if you and all your offspring have children when they’re 30.

The Economist reported that this is partially due to more women working in lower paying fields, like education, social work, etc. They say that in the U.S. 80 percent of teachers, nurses, secretaries and health aides are women. The Economist also polled women in 8 countries, who said once they had kids, they worked less. This explains why men start outpacing women around 30 years of age.

Ivanka Trump vowed to work on closing the gender pay gap before her father was elected. Most recently, she supported President Trump in rolling back an Obama era rule that required businesses to report pay by gender, ethnicity and race.

2. Marjory Stoneman Douglas

It was Marjory Stoneman Douglas’ birthday last week. Her name probably rings a bell because the Florida school where the latest mass shooting occurred was named after her. Now, students and teens from that school and across the world would likely be making her proud.

Stoneman Douglas was a journalist, a conservationist and a women’s suffrage supporter. She worked tirelessly on behalf of the Everglades, one of Florida’s National Park gems. She was quoted as saying, “you have to stand up for some things in this world.”

Now, students who suffered immense tragedy at the hands of a former classmate are doing just that. We’ve told you how they’re marching for their lives and how their school is now forcing students to use clear backpacks. One student, is stepping outside of his fight for gun control to bring up another issue: women’s health. See Kameron Casky’s tweets below.

To those with questions about my tampon backpack-

I only got lights. I didn’t know. Getting supers for tomorrow.

Sizes, pricing… I’m learning new things about women’s health right now. This stuff is expensive. Steps must be taken to make these health products easier to access

Caskey is learning something women already know: periods are expensive. The Huffington Post says that your period could cost you up to $18,000 in your lifetime.

3. Professor Says The Border Wall Could Change the Environment

DoD photo by Staff Sgt. Dan Heaton, U.S. Air Force. (Released)

Yesterday, April 9, 2018, construction began in remote New Mexico on President Trump’s border wall. This section is reported to be an 18-foot wall with six more feet buried underground. This new installment will run for 20 miles.

Tim Keitt, a professor of integrative biology at the University of Texas at Austin, says this should concern us all for one reason: the environment. He recently wrote an op-ed for The Hill and the Texas Perspectives about it.

In it, Keitt said, “When species become extinct locally or globally, it can lead to cascading environmental crises, ranging from soil erosion to flooding. If Tamaulipan thornscrub — a once abundant but now disappearing ecosystem — vanishes, it may take with it the plants, microbes and wildlife that have evolved to depend on it. In both predictable and unpredictable ways, that will affect the economy and quality of life for people in its native South Texas region.”

The border between the United States and Mexico is about 2,000 feet long. President Trump says he plans to cover 700 feet of that with his border wall.